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U.S. warship sails through Taiwan Strait

ROC Central News Agency

04/17/2023 12:56 PM

Taipei, April 17 (CNA) The U.S. Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Milius sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday with the U.S. Navy calling the voyage a "routine" transit.

The U.S. warship's transit was made "through waters where high-seas freedoms of navigation and overflight apply in accordance with international law," the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet said in a statement released on Sunday.

"The ship transited through a corridor in the Strait that is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal State," it said. "Milius' transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States' commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific."

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense later confirmed the transit, saying in a statement that the military had a full grasp of the situation as the U.S. warship sailed through the strait northward, and did not spot any irregularities.

The U.S. Navy sails warships through the strait around once a month, and also regularly conducts similar freedom of navigation missions in the disputed South China Sea.

The Milius' transit on Sunday came one week after China carried out three days of military exercises around Taiwan from April 8-10, during which dozens of Chinese warplanes and warships crossed the Taiwan Strait median line and flew into the southwestern part of Taiwan's air defense identification zone (ADIZ).

The drills were one of several measures taken by Beijing in response to President Tsai Ing-wen's (蔡英文) meeting with U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California on April 5 (U.S. time) before she concluded her 10-day overseas trip that included visits to Taiwan's Central American allies.

Taiwan's government insisted it has a right to conduct its own diplomatic affairs and that Tsai's meeting with McCarthy was important to strengthen the two sides' relationship. Taipei and some U.S. politicians want high-level meetings between the two sides to be regular and normalized.

Beijing, however, regarded mainland China and Taiwan as part of one country to be reunified one day, and strongly objected to the Tsai-McCarthy meeting, which it saw as emboldening Taiwanese pro-independence forces and an attempt to change the status quo.

Tsai's meeting with McCarthy was the third between a Taiwanese leader and a sitting House speaker and the first on U.S. soil since the Republic of China (Taiwan) and Washington ended official diplomatic relations in 1979.

(By Elizabeth Hsu)

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